Everyone was in the loop
Donald Trump had a plan.
He’d take out Joe Biden with a carefully formulated scandal.
That plan didn’t work.
Trump and his fellow Republicans are being revealed as dunderheads at the ongoing impeachment hearings.
Oh, Republicans swear they’re seeing it another way.
That Trump was merely making sure that America’s money would be spent as a force for good in Ukraine.
Problem is, that entire theory of the case has been slowly dismantled by witness-after-witness, who’ve taken an oath, to tell the truth.
It appears the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee don’t see the truth when it walks right up to them and says hello.
Devin Nunes, the churlish head Republican on the committee, is desperately trying to lead the opposition.
All he does is come equipped every session with fresh insults.
According to Nunes, the Democrats are mounting an “impeachment charade,” a “smear campaign,” “scorched earth political warfare,” a “sham impeachment process,” using “fake outrage” or “a galaxy of bizarre accusations that have been leveled against the president.”
Those accusations, as “bizarre”, as Nunes claims they are, have been devastating to the cause of exonerating Trump.
Last Wednesday, Gordon Sondland, the Ambassador to the European Union, said in no uncertain terms, that the price Ukraine would have had to pay for its much-needed weapons to defend itself against Russia, was to announce that it was looking for dirt against Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
That is the very definition of a “quid pro quo.”
Not only that, Sondland kept returning to the same phrase: “Everyone was in the loop.”
He referred to Trump’s attorney, ex-New York Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, as Trump’s point man whom, by the way, he didn’t want to work with.
Not only that, the phrase “everyone was in the loop,” meant a lot of key players in Trump’s sphere.
Sondland recited a laundry list of participants. He mentioned Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and even Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson as having some knowledge of the attempted transaction.
For weeks, Republicans had resisted the notion that there had been a quid pro quo.
Last week, they heard it from Sondland, who isn’t exactly a “never-Trumper.”
(NOTE: A “never-Trumper” is anybody who doesn’t worship at the altar of Donald J. Trump, I suppose.)
Sondland’s a guy who spent a million dollars on Trump’s inauguration shindig, as a down payment on his ambassadorship.
Meanwhile, Nunes and his fellow Republicans have done all they can to dismantle an ever-expanding case against Trump.
They always find ways to attack the origins of the impeachment inquiry, by trying to “out” the whistleblower whose complaint ignited it.
The mere silliness of trying to uncover the source of an investigation, when the investigation has greatly borne out the whistleblower’s concerns, is apparent.
Republicans have repeatedly claimed that the Ukrainian hierarchy didn’t even know about Trump withholding his weapons support – so there wasn’t any real problem with what he did.
Once again, that whole line of reasoning was made to disintegrate.
Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, testified that she knew (through emails) that Ukraine had been made aware of the stalled aid as early as July.
“What is going on with Ukrainian security assistance?” a Ukrainian contact asked in an email to a member of Cooper’s staff.
Another threadbare argument repeatedly posed by Republicans on the committee is that Ukraine, not Russia was the real source of meddling in the 2016 election. And that was the true source of Trump’s resistance to supporting Ukraine with much-needed weaponry.
But just like the other far-fetched theories Republicans have hatched, that dog didn’t hunt, right in full view of the American public.
Fiona Hill, the onetime top Russia specialist on the National Security Council, appeared last Thursday.
She claimed that the narrative about Ukraine’s supposed election meddling is, “a fictional narrative.”
A fictional narrative.
Isn’t that becoming a phrase that actually defines the entire Trump presidency?
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.